I’ve owned a Leica Q2 for a little over a month so far. I haven’t really used it enough to say what I truly like (or dislike) about it, aside from moving from an APC-C sensor to a full frame sensor has been a fantastic upgrade in the lighting conditions in which I’ve been shooting.
The last day I had actual, honest to god, direct sunlight was on November 19, 2023. Every other day I’ve been out has been cloudy, rainy, or just grey. The larger sensor has meant that I’m reliably able to shoot at 1/500 and at an ISO under 3200. That would have been entirely impossible where I shoot with either my Fuji X100F or the Ricoh GR IIIx.
The Globe and Mail has a terrific photographic series entitled "A century caught on camera." As a Toronto resident I was struck by just how many traditions, rituals, and grievances have stuck with the city–or in the city–for over a century.
Further, the way in which the images have been captured has changed substantially over time as a result of the technical capacity of camera equipment, along with the interests or preferences of the photographers at different times. Images in the past decade or two, as an example, clearly draw more commonly from celebrity or artistic portraiture than 50 years ago. Moreover, it’s pretty impressive just how much photographers have done with their equipment over the past century and this, generally, speaks to how easy street and documentary photographers have it today as compared to when our compatriots were using slow lenses and film.
It may take you quite a while to get through all the images but I found the process to be exceedingly worthwhile. Though I admit that the first decade during which the Globe used colour images probably ranks as my least favourite period in the galleries that the paper has published.
For the past several years I’ve kept looking at the Leica Q2 as the next step in the camera I want to use. To be clear, I think I’m pretty proficient with the Fuji X100F but I’ve also been in situations where it hasn’t been able to perform, either due to weather or extreme low light. And as much as I like it there are things I find less than ideal about the Fuji, including the zone focusing system.
When I was in Quebec, recently, I held the Q2 for the first time, and got to play with it bit, and it convinced me that this was the next device I wanted to use to make photos. I don’t know that I’ll actually use it to make 28mm images and suspect I’ll crop to 35mm (equiv), but regardless I’m looking forward to using it when it arrives in the next week or so!
I’m a street photographer and have taken tens of thousands of images over the past decade. For the past couple years I’ve moved my photo sharing over to Glass, a member-paid social network that beautifully represents photographers’ images and provides a robust community to share and discuss the images that are posted.
I’m a big fan of Glass and have paid for it repeatedly. I currently expect to continue doing so. But while I’ve been happy with all their new features and updates previously, the newly announced computer vision-enabled search is a failure at launch and should be pulled from public release.
To be clear: I think that this failure can (and should) be rectified and this post documents some of the present issues with Glass’ AI-enabled search so their development team can subsequently work to further improve search and discoverability on the platform. The post is not intended to tarnish or otherwise belittle Glass’s developers or their hard work to build a safe and friendly photo sharing platform and community.
Trust and Safety and AI technologies
It’s helpful to start with a baseline recognition that computer vision technologies tend to be, at their core, anti-human. A recent study of academic papers and patents revealed how computer vision research fundamentally strips individuals of their humanity by way of referring to them as objects. This means that any technology which adopts computer vision needs to do so in a thoughtful and careful way if it is to avoid objectifying humans in harmful ways.
But beyond that, there are key trust and safety issues that are linked to AI models which are relied upon to make sense of otherwise messy data. In the case of photographs, a model can be used to subsequently enable queries against the photos, such as by classifying men or women in images, or classifying different kinds of scenes or places, or so as to surface people who hold different kinds of jobs. At issue, however, is thatmanyofthe popular AI models have deep or latent biases — queries for ‘doctors’ surface men, ‘nurses’ women, ‘kitchens’ associated with images including women, ‘worker’ surfacing men — or they fundamentally fail to correctly categorize what is in the image, with the result of surfacing images that are not correlated with the search query. This latter situation becomes problematic when the errors are not self-evident to the viewer, such as when searching for one location (e.g., ‘Toronto’) reveals images of different places (e.g., Chicago, Singapore, or Melbourne) but that a viewer may not be able to detect as erroneous.
Bias is a well known issue amongst anyone developing or implementing AI systems. There are numerous ways to try to technically address bias as well as policy levers that ought to be relied upon when building out an AI system. As just one example, when training a model it is best practice to include a dataset card, which explains the biases or other characteristics of the dataset in question. These dataset cards can also explain to future users or administrators how the AI system was developed so future administrators can better understand the history behind past development efforts. To some extent, you can think of dataset cards as a policy appendix to a machine language model, or as the ‘methods’ and ‘data’ section of a scientific paper.
Glass, Computer Vision, and Ethics
One of Glass’ key challenges since its inception has been around onboarding and enabling users to find other, relevant, photographers or images. While the company has improved things significantly over the past year there was still a lot of manual work to find relevant work, and to find photographers who are active on the platform. It was frustrating for everyone and especially to new users, or when people who posted photos didn’t categorize their images with the effect of basically making them undiscoverable.
One way to ‘solve’ this has been to apply a computer vision model that is designed to identify common aspects of photos — functionally label them with descriptions — and then let Glass users search against these aspects or labels. The intent is positive and, if done well, could overcome a major issue in searching imagery both because the developers can build out a common tagging system and because most people won’t take the time to provide detailed tags for their images were the option provided to them.
Sometimes the system seems to work pretty well. Searching for ‘street food vendors’ pulls up pretty accurate results.
However, when I search for ‘Israeli’ I’m served with images of women. When I open them up there is no information suggesting that the women are, in fact, Israeli, and in some cases images are shot outside of Israel. Perhaps the photographers are Israeli? Or there is location-based metadata that geolocates the images to Israel? Regardless, it seems suspicious that this term almost exclusively surfaces women.
Searching ‘Arab’ also brings up images of women, including some who are in headscarves. It is not clear that each of the women are Arabic. Moreover, it is only after 8 images of women are presented is a man in a beard shown. This subject, however, does not have any public metadata that indicates he is, or identifies as being, Arabic.
Similar gender-biased results happen when you search for ‘Brazillian’, ‘Russian’, ‘Mexican’, or ‘African’. When you search for ‘European’, ‘Canadian’, ‘American’, ‘Japanese’, however, you surface landscapes and streetscapes in addition to women.
Other searches produce false results. This likely occurs because the AI model has been trained that certain items in scenes are correlated to concepts. As an example, when you search for ‘nurse’ the results are often erroneous (e.g., this photo by L E Z) or link a woman in a face mask to being a nurse. There are, of course, also just sexualized images of women.
When searching for ‘doctor’ we can see that the model likely has some correlation between a mask and being a doctor but, aside from that, the images tend to return male subjects as images. Unlike ‘nurse’ there are no sexualized images of men or women that immediately are surfaced.
Also, if you do a search for ‘hot’ you are served — again — with images of sexualized women. While the images tend to be ‘warm’ colours they do not include streetscapes or landscapes.
Doing a search for ‘cold’, however, and you get cold colours (i.e., blues) along with images of winter scenes. Sexualized female images are not presented.
Consider also some of the search queries which are authorized and how they return results:
‘slut’ which purely surfaces women
‘tasty’ which surfaces food images along with images of women
‘lover’ which surfaces images of men and women, or women alone. It is rare that men are shown on their own
‘juicy’ which tends to return images of fruit or of sexualized women
‘ugly’ which predominantly surfaces images of men
‘asian’ which predominantly returns images of sexualized Asian women
‘criminal’ which often appears linked to darker skin or wearing a mask
‘jew’ which (unlike Israeli) exclusively surfaces men for the first several pages of returned images
‘black’ primarily surfaces women in leather or rubber clothing
‘white’ principally surfaces white women or women in white clothing
Note that I refrained from any particularly offensive queries on the basis that I wanted to avoid taking any actions that could step over an ethical or legal line. I also did not attempt to issue any search queries using a language other than English. All queries were run on October 15, 2023 using my personal account with the platform.
Steps Forward
There are certainly images of women who have been published on Glass and this blogpost should not be taken as suggesting that these images should be removed. However, even running somewhat basic queries reveal that (at a minimum) there is an apparent gender bias in how some tags are associated with men or women. I have only undertaken the most surface level of queries and have not automated searches or loaded known ‘problem words’ to query against Glass. I also didn’t have to.
Glass’ development team should commit to pulling its computer vision/AI-based search back into a beta or to pull the system entirely. Either way, what the developers have pushed into production is far from ready for prime time if the company—and the platform and its developers—are to be seen as promoting an inclusive and equitable platform that avoids reaffirming historical biases that are regularly engrained in poorly managed computer vision technologies.
Glass’ developers have previously shown that they deeply care about getting product developments right and about fostering a safe and equitable platform. It’s one of the reasons that they are building a strong and healthy community on the platform. As it stands today, however, their AI-powered search function violates these admirable company values.
I hope that the team corrects this error and brings the platform, and its functions, back into comportment with the company’s values rather than continue to have a clearly deficient product feature deployed for all users. Maintaining the search features, as it exists today, would undermine the team’s efforts to otherwise foster the best photographic community available on the Internet, today.
Glass’ developers have shown attentiveness to the community in developing new features and fixing bugs, and I hope that they read this post as one from a dedicated and committed user who just wants the platform to be better. I like Glass and the developers’ values, and hope these values are used to undergird future explore and search functions as opposed to the gender-biased values that are currently embedded in Glass’ AI-empowered search functions.
I’ve had the good fortune to get out and take photos pretty well every week of the summer. On the whole I’ve enjoyed decent light, good and interesting weather, and lots of events that opened up opportunities to capture the city in interesting ways.
This was taken at one of the first festivals of the summer. I just walked back and forth through it over a couple of days and left with a number of images I liked, with this probably my favourite. Why?
First, I love the woman’s expression in her relationship to the officer, as well as with the pineapples: what exactly is the problem? Why is she so shocked? What has the officer said, if anything?
Second, I liked the background — it showcases this part of Toronto. It’s not filled with the new shiny glass buildings and condos, and still has some of the older shops and signs. This location gives a sense of ‘where’ this image was taken.
Third, I just like having images with pineapples in them. I don’t know why but I can tell it’s a motif in studying the images that I’ve taken over the years.
Queens Quay & Spadina, Toronto, 2023
This image was taken on Toronto’s waterfront. It just captures all the things that summer can be in Toronto: ferries coming from the Toronto islands, some people relaxing along the water, seagulls (which are everywhere along the waterfront in the summer), travellers landing at the island airport, and just a sense of activity and calm.
York & Wellington, Toronto, 2023
Taken from the financial district of downtown Toronto, I really liked how the light was falling on the scene and the way that the male subject is relaxing against the bulls. It almost feels pastoral to me, which isn’t the typical experience I get when walking around (or living in) the downtown core.
Queen & Bay, Toronto, 2023
I’m a sucker for taking photos of ice cream trucks and I really liked how this guy was looking out of the truck while a pigeon was just wandering by in the lower left of the frame. Is this the most complex image I took in the summer? Nope. But I still liked the environmental portrait that was captured.
Spadina & St Andrew, Toronto, 2023
Taken along one of my regular patrol routes, there’s a lot that I like throughout this frame.
It has a lot of construction elements — something I’ve been deliberately including in my street photos as part of a long-term project — and there’s some sub-framing that comes out because of how the shadows lay against the wall. The subjects to the far right of the frame are somewhat interesting — what are they pointing at? And does it intersect with the ‘caution’ warning? — but their shadows are where they shine. The shadows seem like they’re up to…something…while at the same time there is a subject that is reminiscent of the Invisible Man wandering along the left side of the frame. In aggregate, this scene has a degree of dimensionality that I really liked, some subjects of interest, and fit within an ongoing project.
Queens Quay & Bay, Toronto, 2023
I’m always a sucker for isolated subjects in the city who are in interesting situations, or have interesting expressions or body language. This photograph captures this for me.
I like that the main subject seems somewhat desolate, and yet is sitting alongside a series of summer treats and toys. And the fact that this is a vendor who only takes cash? I wonder when such signs are going to be real indicators of a distant past. The other piece that I like is how the top, right, and left of the frame are all food-related: the subject is selling popcorn and candies, hotdogs are being sold along the left of the frame, and the top of the frame can refer to top-end gourmet restaurants. So there’s multiples ‘frames’ to the subject which, again, adds a degree of structure or complexity into the composition.
Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 2023
This was taken during the waning days of the CNE, which is a massive festival that takes place annually in Toronto. People are typically excited and happy, but our older subject, here, seems sad, quiet, or in deep contemplation.
Having her placed against games and the Kool-Aid Man on one side, and the child and mother on the other, really underscores her emotional state in what is typically a festive situation. I also like the depth of the photo that indicates where the women is in Toronto. This leaves the viewer with a deeper sense of context, which helps to amplify the woman’s facial expression and body language.
Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 2023
The final photo of the summer is another from the CNE. The subjects in this one exemplify what is ‘normal’ in the summer — happiness, togetherness, and fun. The subjects’ expressions and open and apparent and I love how large the stuffed pig is in context to the woman — what will she do with it once she gets it home?
While it’s not the most complicated of photos I took over the summer it expresses a sense of unadulterated happiness or joy that regularly brings a smile to my face.
For the past several months Neale James has talked about how new laws which prevent taking pictures of people on the street will inhibit the documenting of history in certain jurisdictions. I’ve been mulling this over while trying to determine what I really think about this line of assessment and photographic concern. As a street photographer it seems like an issue where I’ve got some skin in the game!
In short, while I’m sympathetic with this line of argumentation I’m not certain that I agree. So I wrote a longish email to Neale—which was included in this week’s Photowalk podcast—and I’ve largely reproduced the email below as a blog post.
I should probably start by stating my priors:
As a street photographer I pretty well always try to include people in my images, and typically aim to get at least some nose and chin. No shade to people who take images of peoples’ backs (and I selectively do this too) but I think that capturing some of the face’s profile can really bring many street photos to life.1
I, also, am usually pretty obvious when I’m taking photos. I find a scene and often will ‘set up’ and wait for folks to move through it. And when people tell me they aren’t pleased or want a photo deleted (not common but it happens sometimes) I’m usually happy to do so. I shoot between 28-50mm (equiv.) focal lengths and so it’s always pretty obvious when I’m taking photos, which isn’t the case with some street photographers who are shooting at 100mm . To each their own but I think if I’m taking a photo the subjects should be able to identify that’s happening and take issue with it, directly, if they so choose to.
Anyhow, with that out of the way:
If you think of street photography in the broader history of photography, it started with a lot of images with hazy or ghostly individuals (e.g. ‘Panorama of Saint Lucia, Naples’ by Jones or ’Physic Street, Canton’ by Thomson or ‘Rue de Hautefeuille’ by Marville). Even some of the great work—such as by Cartier-Bresson, Levitt, Bucquet, van Schaick, Atget, Friedlander, Robert French, etc—include photographs where the subjects are not clearly identified. Now, of course, some of their photographs include obvious subjects, but I think that it’s worth recognizing that many of the historical ‘greats’ include images where you can’t really identify the subject. And… that was just fine. Then, it was mostly a limitation of the kit whereas now, in some places, we’re dealing with the limitations of the law.
Indeed, I wonder if we can’t consider the legal requirement that individuals’ identifiable images not be captured as potentially a real forcing point for creativity that might inspire additional geographically distinctive street photography traditions: think about whether, in some jurisdictions, instead of aperture priority being a preferred setting, that shutter priority is a default, with speeds of 5-15 second shutters to get ghostly images.2
Now, if such a geographical tradition arises, will that mean we get all the details of the clothing and such that people are wearing, today? Well…no. Unless, of course, street photographers embrace creativity and develop photo essays that incorporate this in interesting or novel ways. But street photography can include a lot more than just the people, and the history of street photography and the photos we often praise as masterpieces showcase that blurred subjects can generate interesting and exciting and historically-significant images.
One thing that might be worth thinking about is what this will mean for how geographical spaces are created by generative AI in the future. Specifically:
These AI systems will often default to norms based on the weighting of what has been collected in training data. Will they ‘learn’ that some parts of the world are more or less devoid of people based on street photos and so, when generating images of certain jurisdictions, create imagery that is similarly devoid of people? Or, instead, will we see generative imagery that includes people whereas real photos will have to blur or obfuscate them?
Will we see some photographers, at least, take up a blending of the real and the generative, where they capture streets but then use programs to add people into those streetscapes based on other information they collect (e.g., local fashions etc)? Basically, will we see some street photographers adopt a hybrid real/generative image-making process in an effort to comply with law while still adhering to some of the Western norms around street photography?
As a final point, while I identify as a street photographer and avoid taking images of people in distress, the nature of AI regulation and law means that there are indeed some good reasons for people to be concerned about the taking of street photos. The laws frustrating some street photographers are born from arguably real concerns or issues.
For example, companies such as Cleaview AI (in Canada) engaged in the collection of images and, subsequently, generated biometric profiles of people based on scraping publicly available images.
Most people don’t really know how to prevent such companies from being developed or selling their products but do know that if they stop the creation of training data—photographs—then they’re at least less likely to be captured in a compromising or unfortunate situation.
It’s not the photographers, then, that are necessarily ‘bad’ but the companies who illegally exploit our work to our detriment, as well as to the detriment of the public writ large.
All to say: as street photographers, and photographers more generally, we should think broader than our own interests to appreciate why individuals may not want their images taken in light of technical developments that are all around us. And importantly, the difference is that as photographers we do often share our work whereas CCTV cameras and such do not, with the effect that the images we take can end up in generative AI, and non-generative AI training data systems, whereas the cameras that are monitoring all of us always are (currently…) less likely to be feeding the biometric surveillance training data beast.
While, at the same time, recognizing that sometimes a photo is preferred because people are walking away from the camera/towards something else in the scene. ↩︎
I’ve been shooting with a Fuji X100F for three years now, having gotten a used one for $800 CAD just prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since purchasing it I’ve shot well north of 100,000 photos, and retained approximately 12,000 after culling.
In mid-October 2021 I built or adapted a recipe for monochrome images. In mid-2022 I found a ‘Leica-like’ colour recipe which I’ve kept in camera, though not used all that often. During my ownership of the camera I’ve made a lot of other recipes and just not really used them.
I’m back in isolation for the second time in 6-7 months and so took the time this weekend to update my Custom profiles. I know that others find these kinds of profiles/recipes helpful and so I thought I’d post them for others who are interested. In the case of Custom One and Custom Four I include a small selection of images that were made with the respective recipes.
Global Note
Ages ago I set my White Balance to Auto (R 2, B -2). My preference would be to have the white balance associated with each Custom mode but that’s only possible with the X100V, so I just have set this and left it.
Generally, I wanted to make sure that Custom One was the most commonly used recipe that I used. Previously, this was set to Customer Five which was fine (I had muscle memory on flipping back to it in the menu) but added more work than should have existed. I then tried to batch the ‘key’ monochrome and colour profiles together; Custom Seven is a default Acros but I don’t really expect to dig that deep into my Custom Recipes to get to it all that often.
Also, for the past year or so I’ve kept a Moment Cinebloom 10% on the lens, which gives images a slightly softer image and blooms light.
I have shot a lot of images with this recipe, probably to the tune of retaining about 8,000 frames over a year and a half. Generally, I find that in hard lighting (with strong shadows and bright highlights) that it benefits from dialling the exposure down by -⅔ to -1.0. In brighter light, however, I find that it works best to dial up exposure by at least ⅓ and often ⅔.
DR: 200
Film Simulation: Black and White
Grain Effect: Weak
While Balance: Auto
Highlight Tone: 2
Shadow Tone: 2
Colour: 0
Sharpness: -1
Noise Reduction: 0
Shocking LightWinter FlightToronto, 2023Toronto, 2023Toronto, 2023Queen & Bay, Toronto, 2023Toronto, 2023Royal York Hotel, Toronto, 2023
I do find that with this profile I sometimes use the Brush in Snapseed to either Dodge & Burn or increase exposure on faces when they’re hidden in shadows.
Custom Two—“Ilford HP5 Plus”
This is the recipe from Fuji X Weekly. I haven’t shot with it as of yet, but am curious to see how it looks as compared to my ‘normal’ (Custom One) monochrome recipe. Based on the settings it should naturally have a stronger contrast than comes normally with Custom One.
DR: 200
Film Simulation: Acros
Grain Effect: Strong
While Balance: Auto
Highlight Tone: 4
Shadow Tone: 2
Colour: 0
Sharpness: 0
Noise Reduction: -3
Exposure Compensation: 0 (Normally)
Custom Three—“Astia Kodak Ektar 100”
Another recipe from Fuji X Weekly! I like this as it’s punchy but somewhat soft in its nature. I’m going to be a bit curious to see how this looks with my Moment Cinebloom 10% Filter.
DR: DR-Auto
Film: Astia
Grain: None
White Balance: Auto
Highlight Tone: 1
Shadow Tone: 3
Colour: 4
Sharpness: 1
Noise Reduction: -3
Exposure Compensation: 0 to ⅓ (typically)
Note: while the recipe calls for 3 Red and -2 Blue, my white balance is set to 2 Red and -2 Blue.
Custom Four—“Leica Colour”
I have no idea where precisely this came from but it’s been the only colour profile I’ve used for the past year or so. I really like how saturated and bright it is, but really have no idea how much what comes through is really ‘Leica-like’. This was just the description provided by wherever I copied the recipe.
DR: 200
Film: Standard
Grain: None
White Balance: Auto
Highlight Tone: 1
Shadow Tone: 1
Colour: 3
Sharpness: 1
Noise Reduction: 0
Custom Five—“Punchy Classic Chrome”
I have a love of Classic Chrome, and added this to make it a little more saturated than typical. I also wanted to see about adding more dramatic contrast between highlights and shadows, which is something I often tried to do in post when I first shot Classic Chrome a few years ago.
DR: 200
Film: Classic Chrome
Grain: None
White Balance: Auto
Highlight tone: 2
Shadow Tone: 2
Colour: 1
Sharpness: 1
Noise Reduction: 0
Custom Six—“Punchy Pro High-Neg”
I…haven’t really ever taken a photo with Pro High-Neg before. So I don’t quite know how this recipe will play out or even how much I might use it.
DR: Auto
Film: Pro High-Neg
Grain: Weak
WB: Auto
Highlight: 1
Shadow: 1
Colour: 1
Sharpness: -1
Noise Reduction: 0
Custom Seven—“Acros Bland”
This is a pure Acros recipe with no changes. I just want it present to be able to quickly flip to it and try it out at some point.
DR: 200
Film: Acros
Grain: Off (Acros increases grain normally as you exceed 800 ISO)
I made this image while out on my weekend photowalk. I’ve passed this same location hundreds of time since I’ve lived in Toronto. In what might become a semi-regular type of post, I wanted to write a bit about the backstory of the image. It was originally posted to Glass.
I was drawn to this scene, first, just because of how the light managed to slice through the shadows which were cast by the surrounding skyscrapers. After dialling the exposure to -1.3 I waited for some interesting characters to pass through the light.
It was only after taking a couple images that I really noticed how the unhoused person’s feet and legs were apparent. They were on grates that pass steam in the colder times of the year. Some of the unhoused use these grates to stay warm during the winter.
Still, the city—and especially the city core—does have a serious and growing housing issue. And so I ultimately decided to compose the scene with the hopes that it would show people noticing, but passing by, the individual on the street, as a kind of broader commentary of the social housing issues that exist in Toronto.
Compositionally the image is simple: a pair of men looking in the direction of the source of the light, and not towards the half shrouded person on the sidewalk, and moving towards the light. Behind them the aperture of the light beam starts to close, but the reader of the photograph can see the sparkle of youth (the new, glass, building) as juxtaposed agains the old (Toronto’s historical city hall). The young reflects the old, reminding us that youth is impermanent. As I said: it’s not a deep photograph nor are any particularly special tricks used to make it.
I often linger when I find light that I like for at least a couple minutes, to see if more interesting (or any interesting!) subjects come to fill the scene. Other times I’ll recompose and work the scene a little bit. But I have to admit that staying put is something that I need to get better with: it’s not enough to just linger for 5-10 minutes!
The above set of images aren’t touched up and are a few of the ‘raw’ versions of images I took and normally wouldn’t post (I took a total of about 20 frames before I settled on the one at the top of the post). I, personally, learn a lot from the older Magnum photos that include contact sheets.
While my rougher images aren’t the same, nor as descriptive, as contact sheets maybe they’ll be helpful to someone else when they are thinking of weighing a scene. Or maybe just to make clear that the admittedly very amateur images I make involve a lot more than just one lucky capture (with a handful of exceptions of course).
For the past five to six years or so I’ve been going to the Winter Stations outdoor art exhibit in the Beaches area of Toronto. Each year there is an international public competition between artists to put up architectural exhibits that include or encompass a lifeguard station that is set up along the Beach. Depending on the year there is, or isn’t, snow on the ground.
Families, children, and dogs all show up to enjoy (and try to understand!) the various exhibits that go up each year. At this point I see it as one of my ‘Toronto rituals’; the exhibition became important to me many years ago and I’ve refused to let that change. This part of the city, for as long as it lasts, is part of my experience of the city of Toronto itself and the ritual of seeing the exhibitions is part of what it is for me to be a Torontonian.
There’s a lot to enjoy about the experience, not the least being the presence of ‘typical’ beach stuff like the Muskoka chairs that people use along with the moderate starkness of the beach in a relatively inhospitable period of time. Some times that I’ve been to the exhibit has seen me shivering despite wearing multiple layers, along with an insulated vest and long wool coat with wool mittens and hat. Others have seen me just get wet with the rain as it pours onto the same kind of outfit. Fortunately it was a relatively balmy -2 degrees (Celsius) with no precipitation and I stayed warm the whole time, this year!
Each time I come to the art exhibit I not only feel a bit like I’m going through a Toronto-ritual I’ve developed but, also, it reminds me a bit of growing up along the Atlantic. The water isn’t salty and the life guard stations are a lot closer to the water, but it’s about the closest I’m likely to get to my historical home as is likely to occur.
One of the things that I always seem to look for when at this event is the kind of starkness or minimalism that is present in the exhibits. They need to stand up to the elements and, also, the destructive nature of children. And so many of the exhibitions are robust without much decoration. Years ago, there was an exhibit that encouraged children to (and I’m quoting) “interact” with the exhibit. It was ruined by the time that I appeared, though kids still liked jumping on all the damaged bits.
I had the pleasure this time of visiting the exhibit with my partner and a friend who generously put up with me making photos while they had conversations with one another. Despite being the person who was responsible for dragging people to the event—though it wasn’t this cold this time!—I was probably less present and/or took too much time doing my own thing than was likely appreciated. Both are long forgiving in their willingness to indulge me in my hobby.
Each time I return to this part of Toronto I’m reminded of my past: this was where I lived, many moons ago, and where some life changing stuff happened in my life. There’s always a sense of renewal—insofar as the art and people are different—along with a sense of the past that haunts me whenever I walked along this part of Lake Ontario.
At the same time, it’s always invigorating: it’s a place that reminds me of what once was and what is, now. And how great that now is!
Some of the images I captured while at the exhibition this year, such as the above image of the empty chairs behind the fence, remind me that this space will be renewed soon with beach goers visiting and a liveliness that belies the current (general) absence of humans. Toronto ebbs and flows, and its residents will soon flow back to this part of the city once the weather improves some. I’ll look forward to returning to the Beaches—and capturing them in photographs—when the seasons have shifted!
Excited Pixels 